AMS Einstein Public Lecture

The 2016 Einstein Public Lecture will be held at this meeting in the Tate Theater in the Tate Student Center, beginning at 5:15 p.m. on Saturday, March 5, 2016. (See a floor plan of the building; it’s the large red space on Level 3.) The lecturer will be Erik Demaine, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Fun with Fonts: Mathematical Typography. See poster here.

Abstract: Over the past decade, my father and I have designed several typefaces based on mathematical theorems and open problems. These typefaces expose the general public in a unique way to intriguing results and hard problems in hinged dissections, geometric tours, origami design, computer-aided glass design, physical simulation, protein folding, juggling, and card shuffling. Most of our typefaces include puzzle fonts, where reading the intended message requires engaging in the mathematics itself, solving a series of puzzles which illustrate the challenge of the underlying mathematical problem.